


sans tâche

by arriviste



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drinking Games, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:01:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arriviste/pseuds/arriviste
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We could play spin the bottle," Bossuet said hopefully.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sans tâche

**Author's Note:**

  * For [skeletonsmama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletonsmama/gifts).



> Enormous thank you to [labellementeuse](http://archiveofourown.org/users/labellementeuse) for beta-reading in tearing haste.

Grantaire's plans for Christmas consisted of drinking himself into a stupor alone in his flat as soon as his shift finished on Christmas Eve, and remaining drunk until the bunting had come down and the Christmas markets had been shut up and the elaborate Nativities had been dismantled. He didn't have much hope of staying drunk until the second skin of Christmas lights had come down from the Galeries Lafayette, not without sacrificing his liver function ("It _grows back_ ," he'd told a fretting Joly once, with a triumphant finger on the _Liver_ entry on wikipédia), but he could at least avoid the worst excesses of the season.

"Pathetic," Bahorel said. "You think we're letting you do that? Courfeyrac's having a party on Christmas Eve, and if I have to drag you there by the short hairs or the scruff of your neck, well –"

"Fuck Courfeyrac, and fuck his parties." 

The last time Grantaire had let them talk him into drinks after work at Courfeyrac's flat – large and convenient, even with Marius as a temporary roommate, and therefore the nominated place for Amis get-togethers that required more privacy than the Corinthe or the Musain could provide – it had been disastrous, and he wasn't setting himself up for another fall again. Marius hadn't been able to talk to him for weeks without blushing, and Enjolras –

Well, Enjolras had always looked at him like he was badly put-together and had possibly ventured out in public without his pants, but there was a new horror to it when Grantaire could somewhat remember Enjolras looking at him that way _while_ he'd been missing his pants.

"Don't get shitfaced, and you'll be fine," Bahorel said, even less sympathetically. "Short hairs, Grantaire. I'm not fucking around."

"I'll shave."

"Do; Marius'll enjoy that the next time he gets an eyeful."

"Fuck you," Grantaire said, but he didn't worry particularly. Bahorel would forget his threats when Christmas Eve rolled around.

-

Courfeyrac's flat looked like Christmas had thrown up in it.

There was tinsel, and glitter, and a real pine tree frosted with fake aerosolised snow, and a Nativity model pushing the télé out of pride of place on its low table. A Nativity not lovingly modelled out of clay or carved and painted wood, or even cast from plaster or plastic. The role of Vierge Mary was being played by a Barbie doll in a short sparkly pink outfit, with a pale blue tissue held in place with sellotape to form her cloak; the carpenter Joseph by an ancient and battered nutcracker. The Holy Infant himself was represented by a small pink pig stolen from some child's toy farm, and someone had carefully cut out a printed picture of the unregretted Benedict XVI and stuck it to a silver star, and hung that star above the whole leering awfully down at it. A small, equally handmade placard rested against the makeshift manger, and read _droit à l'avortement!_ in jagged black marker.

"My grandmother's rolling in her grave somewhere just because I'm _looking_ at this," Bossuet said, shielding his eyes, and Courfeyrac beamed proudly through the magnificent fake white beard he was sporting. Tall and supple, he looked more like Gandalf than Père Noël, but the red shirt added a little to the illusion. He hadn't bothered to stuff his shirt.

"I made the sign," Eponine said, with dark pleasure.

"Of course you did," Grantaire said, and received an elbow in the side. "What sick, twisted mind made the former Pope God himself? Next time I masturbate, I'm going to imagine him watching from the ceiling, and become afflicted with perte de l'érection –"

"That would be me," someone said coolly, and when Grantaire turned his head – not that he needed the verification, but some things had to be seen to believed – Enjolras was standing in the doorway, with his arms folded and his eyebrows raised. 

He didn't look as though he'd come straight from a long shift like everyone else. Grantaire couldn't look at his digusting immaculateness without thinking about how badly Enjolras needed to be punched in the mouth. How someone needed to put their hands in his lovely curling fair hair and pull. How his clean linen shirt should be torn open until the buttons popped off and his dark jacket was shoved off his shoulders. He couldn't look at Enjolras without wanting to see him messed up.

Of course, that went hand-in-hand with how badly Grantaire wanted to be the one to do the messing up - and at the same time, how much he wanted to lie at Enjolras's feet and whimper like a puppy.

It had been like that since the moment he'd met him at the _first_ get-together for Musain/Corinthe staff Courfeyrac had conned him into. Courfeyrac worked casually at both places, and he was a natural gravity well, a whirlpool that sucked everyone into his orbit and made them friends. Grantaire had walked into his flat, and then walked into a metaphorical wall when he set eyes on Enjolras for the first time. That was one thing, sheer blatant flat-out lust; and then Enjolras had opened his mouth, and the beauty had a brain – but one that teemed with half-idealistic, half-disturbing far-left radicalism, ideas that Grantaire couldn't listen to without wanting to pick them apart and turn them over to check for bugs. 

So he'd bug-checked, and basked in Enjolras's full and furious attention, focused as a laser – until the moment Enjolras had finally, obviously and utterly dismissed him as beyond help and turned his attention elsewhere. That had completed the conquest, finished Grantaire and rolled him up, and left him stranded in no man's land, somewhere between adoration and frustration. Willing to do or say anything to get that attention back. 

“Of course you did,” he said now, trying to sound as unaffected as he had when saying the same thing to Eponine. It came out patronising and snide. “Now I'll picture _you_ the next time I lie in bed with my dick in my hand, glaring down at me; it should have the same effect.”

Enjolras looked mildly repelled, and turned, without replying, to say something to Jehan, a tall dark figure leaning against the doorframe with an unexpected flash of white at his throat in the form of a knotted silk scarf. Grantaire's sally apparently wasn't worth a response.

“Don't you picture that anyway?” Eponine asked, sotto voce.

“ _Yes_ ,” Grantaire groaned. “And I don't go soft, I can tell you that.”

He just couldn't talk to Enjolras without eating both his fucking feet, boots and all. 

He needed a drink.

-

In the kitchen, Cosette was icing red and green holly bowties onto gingerbread men. Combeferre was helping her, his precise fingers steady on the piping bag instead of the usual scalpel or needle or whatever the fuck it was they let medical students use.

Grantaire had the vague idea that they spent most of their time hovering at the elbows of actual surgeons, looking and not touching, and maybe the rest of the time practicing their resuscitation skills on blow-up dolls and their needlework on each other. He couldn't any see Frankenstein scars on Combeferre's neat forearms under the rolled-up sleeves, though, so maybe they mostly practiced on actual corpses. Which made Combeferre Doctor Frankenstein, and not his monster, give or take a little electricity and a once-in-a-lifetime lightning storm.

Marius was sitting on the bench watching Cosette, his hands laced in his lap like he'd already been warned not to touch anything. When he noticed Grantaire lurking, he went brilliant red. “I should, um, go see if Courfeyrac needs any help,” he said, and slid off the bench.

“Hi to you, too,” Grantaire said to his disappearing back, and made for the cabinet where he knew Courfeyrac kept his wine.

He'd extracted a half-empty bottle when Cosette pushed a lock of fair hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand and said, “Already?” with the sort of tender concern that Grantaire didn't feel he knew her well enough to deserve, but was going to take anyway.

“It's medicinal.”

“I rather doubt that,” Combeferre said. Joly put his head around the corner, as if summoned. “What happened?”

“Nothing _happened,_ ” Grantaire said, extracting the loosely plugged cork with his teeth and then spitting it onto the bench. “I just needed a little tot of seasonal cheer.”

“Have an oyster,” Joly advised him heartlessly. “Musichetta and I brought them, they're fresh.”

“I'm thirsty, not hungry.”

“Have some water,” Cosette said, but then she glanced sideways. “And _please_ don't expose yourself to Marius tonight. I've just got him to stop spooking at loud noises.”

“I wasn't trying to flash him my cock!” What was the world coming to, when he had to defend his virtue from Pontmercy peeking? “I don't get a cheap thrill from that kind of thing. It was an accident, it's not my fault he developed a penis complex – Freud has a study –”

“Is Grantaire _still_ talking about his privates?” Eponine asked, and fuck, fucking _fuck_ , Grantaire needed to stop saying things when he hadn't checked the perimeter. Enjolras was standing behind her, because of course he was. There'd been a slight change in the noise filtering through from the living room, and apparently half the party had wandered into the kitchen after Joly to see where the rest of it had got to.

“At least you started on one of the open bottles,” Courfeyrac said, as Grantaire guiltily tried to shove the wine behind his back. “I'm kidding! Seriously, there's nothing in there I'd regret. Half the stockpile is cheap five euro shit. Half of it fizzes, come to that. We're drinking like assholes tonight.”

“I see Grantaire's already started,” Enjolras said, and Grantaire wanted to bloody his lip for him; wanted to kiss the supercilious look off his face.

He took another drink.

-

In the living room, the party began to get underway, under the leering aegis of Benedict God The Father. Enjolras could be a truly sick fucker, and his occasionally vulgar and cutting bursts of political commentary or blatant anti-religiosity only made Grantaire want him more desperately. Enjolras seemed like such a plaster-cast of virtue – it wasn't an act, he wasn't even smug about it, he just _was_ – so the little touches of personality and imperfection Grantaire occasionally caught were treasured pieces of evidence that Enjolras was human.

Not that even a mortal Enjolras would or could look down his long perfect nose and find anything worthy of interest in Grantaire, but it brought him imperceptibly closer to earth.

“I've been speaking with the Hucheloups, and they're still not comfortable with letting us use the upper bar on quiet nights,” Enjolras told Combeferre, who frowned thoughtfully. “I did speak with Mlle. Louison, though, and she'd be okay with us using the breakroom after hours for meetings, if we left it clean.”

“It's a little far from the universities,” Combeferre said, “but since we've been banned from meeting on their grounds – ”

Grantaire didn't give a shit about Enjolras's little radical club - which he'd never been invited to attend, but might start haunting if it started being held at the Musain - but he did love the way Enjolras looked when he talked about it in a low fervent voice, his eyes hard and his sharp jaw clenched.

“Assholes,” he said fiercely now, jaw clenching on cue. A lock of curling hair fell over his forehead. “A piece of censorship I think we should still try to appeal – ”

“I think our energies might be better spent on other projects,” Combeferre said, and Bossuet said loudly,

“Hey, not that that isn't very interesting, but this is a _party_.”

Bahorel raised his bottle in a silent toast. He'd brought along a couple of cases of beer, and pressed one on Grantaire. Grantaire wasn't sure if it was meant as an apology for dragging him to Courfeyrac's by main force, or, worse, a subtle suggestion that he stick to the 5% stuff. It would take a lot of beer to get him as shitfaced as on previous occasions. 

In the fridge, where he'd looked before being swept back into the party proper, Grantaire had seen a plate of pâté, another of oysters, and a third bearing a selection of cheeses. There was a covered dish that, when the cloth was tweaked, revealed the bûche de Noël, in all its chocolatey ridiculousness.

This wasn't just another booze-up at Courfeyrac's, it was a proper celebration for a tight-knit group of friends Grantaire barely belonged to. He shouldn't be here.

“We could play spin the bottle," Bossuet said hopefully.

"We're nowhere near drunk enough for that yet," Cosette said. "Table that thought."

"Later," Courfeyrac said, and made eyes at her, which made Marius look worriedly at him; which made Eponine glower, and Musichetta, who was practiced at balancing mercurial Joly and Bossuet with one another, stepped in.

"Let's play something else, to warm up." 

"Drinking game?"

"It doesn't have to be."

"Then what's the _point_ ," Grantaire demanded, and Bahorel threw a gingerbread man at him.

Feuilly was looking thoughtful. He was the most practical of the Amis, and he worked the hardest; he shared shifts with them, then clocked off in order to work his second job. He was going to night school. Grantaire had once overheard him talking to Enjolras about civil unrest in Syria, and lurked outside the break room like a wraith, listening to Enjolras talk with passion and intelligence and the warmth that was otherwise missing, sometimes, and without the slightest hint of condescension or superiority about Feuilly's thoughts.

"We could play La Vache," Feuilly said, which was an old game that summoned up memories of childhood, and school days, and came without any soothing accompaniment of alcohol. This suggestion was roundly booed, Grantaire giving it an emphatic downwards jerk of his thumb.

Enjolras said, "I haven't played that since I was young."

It was so rare for Enjolras to express an opinion on a drinking game, or on any game that didn't involve terrible puns, that the dissent stopped. 

“Me neither,” Combeferre said, with a small pleased smile, and Grantaire wanted to throw up the half bottle of red wine already sloshing in his stomach.

It was a settled thing from the moment Enjolras had expressed an opinion; they were going to play. It was sweet and innocent, it was Enjolras consenting to enjoy himself for once, and he, Grantaire, already working his way to inebriation and hanging around mostly in order to get drunker, to participate in a little vicarious drunken making out – he didn't belong here, playing La Vache Qui Tâche like a child.

“We'd need a lump of coal,” Jehan said, counting on his fingers, “and I suppose we could figure out a way to include drinking –”

“What if we took a drink as well as a mark?”

“A lump of coal!” Bossuet laughed. “I don't think there's likely to be any of that floating around, unless Père Noël's putting it in your stocking tonight.”

“I can put a lump in your stocking,” Bahorel said, with an exaggerated wink, and Jehan blushed on cue.

Enjolras was looking annoyed at the downward turn the conversation had taken. Grantaire got to his feet. “On that note,” he began.

“Grantaire!” Courfeyrac said, snapping his fingers. “You're the artist – any charcoal on your person?”

“What?”

“ _Charcoal,_ ” Courfeyrac said, as though emphasising the word would make his point somehow decipherable. “Un morceau de charbon? Or, failing that – would a marker do?"

"A marker? We're not five –"

"Half a moment," Grantaire said, drawn in despite himself. He turned around, but instead of making for the hall and the front door and freedom, went into the kitchen instead and extracted a couple of bottles from the wine cabinet and a knife from the drawer when Courfeyrac's kitchen proved exasperatingly devoid of a corkscrew.

" _Are_ we making this a drinking game, then?" Eponine asked, looking interested.

"Obviously," Grantaire said, brushing this thought aside. He stabbed through the foil, then sunk the tip of his knife into the cork, wiggled it a few times, and jerked both cork and knife free. "Voilà!"

There was a small scattering of confused applause.

"And now we drink?"

"Now I burn the end of this fucker," Grantaire said, enjoying the positive attention from all corners – even Enjolras was looking interested. He fumbled in his jacket for his lighter, and flicked it on, toasting the wine-stained end of the cork on its knifepoint like a marshmallow. Like a marshmallow, it began to blacken and char, expanding slightly under the heat.

He flicked the lighter off.

"Un morceau de charbon," he said grandly, presenting it to Courfeyrac, who took it with grave appreciation and then immediately tested it on Bossuet.

"Hey!"

"We're not even playing yet, that's cheating –"

"That's _testing,_ " Courfeyrac said. "A man is only as good as his weapon."

"Well, it works," Jehan said, looking at the black smear on Bossuet's cheek. His mouth curved in the way that was a certain premonition of poetry. "Our Eagle has singed wings – a very Icarus among us!"

"Cheating," Bossuet muttered, rubbing at his face.

"And the wine," Cosette said. "I liked Eponine's suggestion – that every time we take a mark, we also take a sip."

Eponine looked suspicious. Grantaire knew, because he'd had to listen to epic Iliads of woe, that Cosette was written down in Eponine's book as a hateful person upon whose head too many good things had been heaped, like a blessed infant with multiple fairy godmothers. She wasn't wrong. Cosette possessed too many privileges not to be hateable; she was beautiful, she was radiantly blonde, she had a doting father, and she'd been front-of-house as a hostess at the Corinthe for only moments before Marius had walked in from the kitchen with several trays of drinks, looked at her, and promptly dropped them. It was Eponine's opinion that it wasn't possible to have all those things and also be as sweetly kind and merry as Cosette seemed to be.

Grantaire rather thought that Cosette was sincere, because he had experience with women who were faking, be it sweetness or orgasms, but he'd never bothered trying to convince Eponine otherwise. That wasn't what she needed from him.

"I concur," Courfeyrac said, glancing around the room. "Seconded? Motion passes."

"I'd like to lodge a complaint," Enjolras said, but was roundly booed as boring. 

Grantaire booed happily and enjoyed the fact that crossness made Enjolras look like an irritated Persian cat.

-

They sat in a circle, around the tealights Courfeyrac had decreed should be lit, “for atmosphere”, cross-legged and suddenly solemn. In the almost-complete darkness Grantaire's friends' faces belonged to strangers, licked into familiarity by the occasional flicker of candlelight at a whoop or too-strong breath.

“Right,” Courfeyrac said, assuming the role of master of ceremonies. He held the cork aloft in his hand, and placed the wine in the center of the circle. “Every time you get a spot, you have to take a swig.”

Joly, predictably, became suddenly concerned about germs. “That doesn’t seem very clean –”

“You can't play drinking games and stay hygienic, Jolllly.”

“Just wait until spin the bottle,” Bossuet said, and waggled his tongue.

“That doesn't – It's not – We already share common household bacteria!” Joly said hotly, to the accompaniment of whooping and whistling.

“ _Ahem,_ ” Courfeyrac said. “As I was saying – I'm number one. We'll go anti-clockwise, which makes Combeferre number two, and so forth – you know how it goes. You fuck up your lines, you get a spot.” He cleared his throat. “ _Je suis la vache qui tâche sans taches numéro un et j'appelle la vache sans tâche numéro seize._ ”

“Oh, fuck you,” Bahorel said, but he cleared his throat. “ _Je suis la vache qui tâche sans tâches numéro seize et j'appelle la vache sans taches numéro quatre_.”

It went on like that, a long unspooling game of memory for numbers around and around the circle, starting off simple but becoming more and more complicated and confusing as the call flickered back and forth. Jehan was the first to falter and take a spot, his attention briefly diverted in studying the shadows cast on the ceiling, and a cackling Bossuet fell on him with the cork and only released him when there was a large black spot on his forehead like a brand.

“And now you drink,” Eponine said, and Jehan crawled forward for the bottle and took an obedient sip. “No, an _actual_ mouthful. That's just getting your lips wet.”

“Devil-woman,” Grantaire said appreciatively. She smirked back at him. She suited candlelight; it made her dark eyes glitter and burnished her skin to almost coppery softness. Marius was an idiot, even if Cosette was an angel.

Enjolras, on the other hand, was cast by the candles into otherworldly loveliness and gleamed in the dark like gold-leaf on a shadowy frescoed wall in San Marco, picked out by the flickering light of a worshipper's candle. His hair was limned in Russian gold, shadow deepening the sockets of his eyes and underlining the perilous fullness of that red mouth.

" _La vache qui tâche numéro deux avec un tâche appelle la vâche qui tâche numéro dix sans tâche,_ " Jehan said, putting the bottle down.

Eventually they were all passing the bottles back and forth, spots or not; and the spots were being doled out with greater and greater frequency as the count grew complicated, the number of marks rising and the potential to lose count growing. Granted, the wine didn't help. Grantaire had more than six spots by the time the game was declared over, four on his face and several smutty smears on his hands and wrists and throat, more the by-effect of having tried to fight an eager Bahorel and Courfeyrac off when they tried to smear him than _tâches_ in their own right.

He didn't care, though; everyone looked ridiculous when, despite Jehan’s objections, the tealights were blown out and the bright lights switched back on. Marius looked like a coal-miner, his freckles invisible under their charcoal. Cosette, laughing like a peal of silver bells, was trying to clean him with a tissue, but only making it worse.

Jehan looked like a Victorian chimneysweep; Bahorel looked like he'd lost a fight and come up in huge dark bruises. Feuilly hadn't accrued too many, but enough to make him look fierce. Joly had a black spot right on the end of his nose, and went slightly cross-eyed in examining it. Eponine had smears of it running along her cheekbones and streaked by her fingers, and she didn't look silly, she looked wild and elemental. 

Combeferre and Musichetta were almost spotless, and Grantaire suspected that that was because no one had dared take too many liberties with elegant Musichetta, and because Combeferre had had to deliberately made a mistake in order to receive a _tâche_. His memory was too precise, his recounting too exact.

Enjolras – Grantaire wasn't supposed to stare at Enjolras. Looking at Enjolras was like pressing on a fresh bruise, or touching a new tattoo. In a way the pain was almost pleasant, but the throbbing ache of it was a reminder from his body to be less stupid, to stop fucking up. He had a new tattoo at the moment, greasy with ointment under his sleeve. He was constantly aware of it the same way he was aware of where Enjolras was in the room, so maybe the metaphor wasn't totally ridiculous.

Of course, part of the satisfaction of a new tattoo was the masochistic feeling of the gun, of peeling back the wrap every morning to inspect the healing process, and therefore lengthen it. Grantaire wasn't _supposed_ to stare at Enjolras, but he did anyway, and got off on the sting.

Enjolras had enjoyed the game at first, or seemed to. He was good at it. He'd smiled, briefly, as Jehan – and then Marius and Bossuet, and then Marius again – had fallen to the charcoal, but the game had gone on, got sloppier and drunker, halted as they wrestled over the cork and tried to avoid being marked, and Enjolras had continued to give textbook answers, and when it ended, he was spotless.

Which was what Grantaire expected of pure and perfect Enjolras, so he wasn't sure why Enjolras was sitting there looking dissatisfied.

“I guess that makes you the winner, chief,” Bahorel said, and handed him the second bottle of wine, which still had a few inches left at the bottom. “Knock it back, even up with the rest of us!”

Enjolras took the bottle warily. He glanced around the room, as though looking for encouragement, or to be told he didn’t really have to drink. 

When he caught Grantaire’s eye, Grantaire raised his eyebrows at him, daring. 

Enjolras drank.

His throat moved as he swallowed, a pure and lovely line in silhouette. Maybe that was how he’d look sucking cock, how he’d tip his head. His lips were wrapped around the mouth of the bottle; maybe that’s how they’d look wrapped around – 

“Ugh,” Enjolras said, grimacing as he wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. “That’s disgusting.”

“Oh, come on,” Courfeyrac said. “Like you can tell the difference between Chateau Yquem and a cheap muscat.”

“I don’t need to have a cultured palate to tell that it’s shit.”

“I picked the best in the cabinet to start off with, so thank fuck you’re not a sommelier,” Grantaire said. That was _his_ dubious honour, and it was his only because the Corinthe was a shithole where they thought paying an alcoholic with half a degree from the Beaux-Arts to offer opinions on vintages like an asshole who knew what he was talking about was a bargain. 

“Indeed,” Enjolras said, in a tone that could cut glass.

“We can’t all be perfect as Enjolras _sans tâche_ ,” Grantaire jeered back. It was a bullshit job, but it was his bullshit job, and only he was allowed to sneer at it. 

"Don’t be a dick," Bahorel said, swatting the back of his head. “You’re just jealous that he ended up unblemished.”

“Why would I be jealous? The sainted _Enjolras_ was hardly going to get down and dirty with the rest of us –”

“On that note,” Courfeyrac said, “I think we’re all sufficiently liquored up for spin the bottle.”

-

“We should change these rules, too,” Musichetta said. “I’m all for wanton make-outs, but some of us – ” she cut her eyes briefly around the room – “could probably use an out.”

“Eponine?” Cosette said. “You’re good at this bit.”

Eponine looked startled, flushing terracotta at the sudden compliment. “Um,” she said. “We could set up a penalty for refusing to go for the kiss. Like truth or dare, but –”

“Shots!” 

“What?”

“That’s not an entirely terrible idea,” Combeferre said, judiciously. 

“Thank you,” Bossuet said, bowing at the waist. “I didn’t think it sucked too badly myself.”

“Body shots,” Feuilly said. He was too quiet; you overlooked him, and then he came out with a suggestion like that.

“Make it a real Solomon’s choice? I like it,” Courfeyrac said. His dark eyes sparkled with naughtiness in his smudged face. 

“You would,” Enjolras said, taking the words out of Grantaire’s mouth before he could say them.

“You don’t have to play,” Cosette told him, with a kind hand on his arm, and she was a lovely girl, and Marius was an incredibly lucky man, and her gingerbread was heavily spiced and delectable, but at that moment Grantaire wanted to smother her with a cushion.

“No way,” Courfeyrac said promptly, and Grantaire was going to kiss him, later, with grateful and copious amounts of tongue. “I _refuse_ to let Enjolras miss out on the fun again. Not on Christmas. You have no choice, my friend, even if I have to _sit_ on you.”

“Did I say I was looking for an out?” Enjolras asked, and the scattered booing became whistling. 

“Someone’s letting their hair down tonight,” Bahorel said approvingly. “First he plays; then he drinks –”

“It _is_ Christmas.”

It was Christmas, so Grantaire had to wonder what the fuck Enjolras was doing at Courfeyrac’s Christmas Party For Misfit Toys. He reeked of money, Marxist ideals or not, angry ranting against the sacred cows of the bourgeoisie or not, part-time job at the Musain or not. Really, Grantaire suspected that Enjolras lowered himself to make coffee mostly because the Musain was convenient to some kind of plot or plan or other. Maybe he secretly passed messages to his contacts when he scribbled on their takeaway cups. It didn’t make sense, otherwise, why he’d chosen to slum with the plebs and get his hands dirty.

He wasn’t the only obviously privileged kid – there was Jehan, and there was Marius, although both of them were embracing the starving artist or student stereotype in their different ways. (Jehan, Grantaire had unkindly thought once or twice before, thought it was _romantic_ to get whooping cough in a garret, like some kind of nineteenth century poet dying slowly of consumption, pausing in the composition of a sonnet in _terza rima_ to daintily cough blood into a lace-trimmed handkerchief). But Enjolras held himself with an unconscious arrogance bred in the bone; he was, Grantaire knew, worse than Marius sometimes when it came to the necessities of life, got distracted by the dual demands of work and academia and had his power or water shut off, and ended up appealing to Combeferre for help. He had to have a family somewhere. _Most_ of them had to have families they could be with instead, and yet – 

“I’m going to need a shot glass, the salt shaker, and a lime, stat,” Courfeyrac said, delegating tasks with imperious jabs of his forefinger. Thus dispatched, Feuilly disappeared to find glasses, Bossuet to fetch the salt, Joly to find and prepare the limes. The finger fell on Grantaire. “The tequila. I’m sure you know where it is.”

He froze. “Um.”

“That’s the face of guilt,” Combeferre said clinically. “Note the rictus of the features.”

“He can’t help it,” Eponine said, digging her toe into Grantaire’s side companionably. “His nose for booze is like a truffle pig’s. I swear to fuck, I _never_ would’ve bet on him finding the vodka minis at my flat, but he went straight to the knicker drawer.”

“Unfair,” Grantaire said, relaxing, and batted his eyelashes at her outrageously. “Maybe something else led me there.”

Eponine's snort was more equine than ladylike. “Bullshit,” she said. “As if you gave a fuck about my knickers.”

“They’re surprisingly pretty.” Marius went tomato-coloured under the smudges, like a peppery Bloody Mary. “Like, you’d expect a lot of black, and I’m not going to lie, it was there, but I also discovered a selection of wispy little lacy things –”

“See, you don’t even know what the fuck to call them,” Eponine said, unmoved by the description of her intimate apparel. 

“Aren't we getting a little far from the point?” Enjolras, frosty. If Grantaire wasn't interested in Eponine's thongs, Enjolras would probably turn to stone if one was waved in his face. Grantaire made a note for the future. 

(It didn't matter whether the attention he managed to hook out of Enjolras was good or bad anymore, only that he got it. “A little childish, maybe,” Joly had said when Grantaire vomited up his woes on his shoulder, soothingly patting his head, “but I believe all the best psychological texts talk about negative attention-seeking from the beloved object – ”)

“ _Interesting_ ,” Courfeyrac said, closing the discussion of the knicker-drawer, and cut his eyes briefly at Combeferre, who was still studying his nails. “Veeeery interesting. But right now: tequila. Do your thing, R – Your country needs you!”

Cosette dimpled. “You make it sound like a superpower.”

“An incredibly useless superpower,” Enjolras said. 

“Hey,” Grantaire said, rootling through the bookshelf. He knew Courfeyrac liked to hide his spirits behind the books and DVDs, under the fond delusion that none of his friends would disturb the collection of law texts and Dumas novels and lesbian pulps from the 1950s with gaudy, dusty covers. “No, actually, that's fair.”

“God, how do you even _do_ that,” Eponine said, when he emerged triumphant with a bottle of tequila found behind _The Vicomte de Bragelonne_ a moment later.

“Aqua Vita Man,” Combeferre said thoughtfully, to applause.

The glasses, the limes, and the salt eventually made their appearance. “It was probably a bad idea to send the three of you together on a quest,” Courfeyrac said, looking at Bossuet, Joly and Feuilly like they were troops that had deserted and he their sorrowing captain. 

“Traitors!” Bahorel said, and mimed a summary execution, his hands twisted together in the shape of a pistol, with a _bang! bang! bang!_ and a popping of his tongue in his cheek as he pointed it at each forehead in turn. Bossuet, who seemed to have been opening more wine in the kitchen, clutched his naked head like it needed protection.

Musichetta recrossed her ankles, directing attention to her long legs, the shinbones glinting through the thin hose, the staccato heels. “Are we going to play spin the bottle, or aren't we?” 

She had a Mona Lisa face and a rare talent for stillness. Musichetta was good at curling up in the corner and watching everything that went on, making herself invisible. That was _her_ superpower. But she came to glittering diamantine life when she chose, like a light switching on; and when Joly was looking at her, or Bossuet was looking at him, she chose.

They were both looking at her now, along with the rest of the room.

“Yes,” Joly said, wetting his mouth. “We are.”

-

The game started predictably. 

Courfeyrac took the first spin, and when the bottle landed on Cosette, laughed at the alarm on Marius's face, crawled across the circle, and kissed her passionately – on the forehead, like she was a good little girl.

When Cosette spun, it landed on Marius with such perfect precision that Grantaire suspected her of telekinesis, or at least cheating. He led the booing as Cosette took Marius by his reddening ears and kissed him firmly. 

“Come on, you can do that any time!”

“Disgusting!”

“Get a room!”

When Marius spun, beaming like an idiot, the bottle landed on Bahorel. His glow disappeared.

“ _Hahaha_ ,” Grantaire chortled, breathless with mirth. Marius was so heterosexual it was painful. “Kiss the shit out of him!”

“Shot!” Marius said, to renewed booing. Bahorel poured out the shot for him, and, grinnning, loosened his shirt buttons so Bossuet could sprinkle salt into his chest hair, before taking the lime wedge between his white teeth. 

On Bahorel's spin, he got Courfeyrac. 

“That's how it's done,” Bossuet said approvingly when they finally broke apart, and when Courfeyrac's next spin caught him, kissed him back with similar enthusiasm.

“Courfeyrac's getting all the action,” Eponine said crossly, but the bottle was more balanced after that; it fell on Jehan, who kissed Bossuet tenderly. His own spin landed on Combeferre, who allowed Jehan to take a shot from his wrist with amusement, and then the bottle fell on Feuilly, who kissed Combeferre with goodwill but without tongue; and then landed on Eponine. “Finally!”

“No shot for you, then?” Courfeyrac asked, waggling the bottle.

“Fuck off,” she said, and curled her hand around the back of Feuilly's neck and jerked him down. 

On Eponine's spin, it landed on Grantaire. “ _Finally_ ,” he said, and leered at her.

“Shot! Shot!” Eponine said, crawling forward to kiss him anyway, and Grantaire scowled at her in mock hurt before she swayed forward. 

She tasted like red wine and probably Feuilly, and Joly was right: drinking games were _absolutely_ unsanitary. He wondered how many times the bottle would have to spin before he was licking Enjolras out of someone's mouth. 

“ _That's_ how it's done,” Eponine said, with a triumphant flicker at Bossuet, and unselfconsciously wiped her mouth on the dragged-up hem of her shirt.

“Hurtful,” Grantaire began, and then all words absolutely left him as his spin of the bottle wobbled around and around and finally stopped, like a faulty compass, pointing at Enjolras.

Courfeyrac whooped, like a jackass.

“Um,” Enjolras said, freezing. “Can I pick the shot?”

Grantaire tried to smile at him. He was fairly sure that it came out as another rictus. It wasn't like he suffered any delusions that Enjolras might ever _want_ to kiss him, but – 

“It's not your turn,” Musichetta said. “You don't get to pick, that's up to Grantaire.” She tilted her head. “Grantaire, kiss or shot?”

“Oh, shot, obviously,” Grantaire said. “Wouldn't want to impose myself on Sir Chivalry here.”

“I didn't mean,” Enjolras said, and then abruptly shut up when Cosette sweetly presented him with a lime wedge to bite.

Eponine looked at Cosette approvingly. “Salt,” she said, and snagged the shaker. “Where do you want to take it from, R?”

How the fuck was he supposed to answer that question? There wasn't a square inch of Enjolras he didn't want to lick. He'd lick him all over; he'd go down on his knees and let Enjolras fuck his face; he'd put Enjolras on his stomach and part his thighs and worm his tongue inside Enjolras's disgustingly perfect ass for the sheer joy of watching him shudder. 

Grantaire tried to answer, but all that came out was a pained-sounding bleat.

“Stomach?” Cosette asked, and Eponine had been right, she _was_ the devil incarnate.

“Throat,” Musichetta suggested.

“Arm,” Combeferre said firmly, and unbuttoned Enjolras's cuff and rolled his sleeve up for him past his elbow. 

Eponine made a face, but she scattered a trail of salt along it anyway, sat back, and let Enjolras hold his arm out to Grantaire like an offering. He looked like some sort of magnificent baited jungle cat at bay, fierce-eyed above the ridiculous thing in his mouth and with his pretty teeth bared by the curl of his upper lip.

Grantaire muffled another bleating whimper as he took Enjolras's arm in his unworthy stubby fingers. The flesh was cool, faintly warm and human. The inside of his wrist was the colour of pale honey, and the veins were blue and green under the fine-grained skin, the tendons standing out like strings on the neck of a guitar. 

Grantaire bent his head and licked a helplessly lingering long salty stripe up his arm from wrist to tender inside of elbow where the veins showed through again, and felt Enjolras shiver slightly under his tongue.

Then he let go, knocked back the shot held out helpfully for him by Courfeyrac, and leaned forward to suck juice out of the lime still clenched between Enjolras's teeth.

It was overly intimate. Their chins brushed, Grantaire's rough stubble against Enjolras's fine skin; he could feel Enjolras's breath on his face as he bit into the lime. Stared into his eyes and ignored their expression long enough to study the beautiful broken striation of his irises, the faint golden sunburst around the black pupils and the greyer veins running through the indigo.

When Grantaire finally leaned back, Enjolras spat out the lime rind into his hand and grimaced at it like the sour sharp taste lingered in his mouth. He didn't blush as prominently or noticeably as Marius, but there was a faint hectic patch of pink high on each lovely cheekbone. 

Grantaire wasn't sure whether he'd briefly gone to heaven or whether he wanted to die right there. He'd gone half-hard, and now he brought his knees up to his chest and locked his arms around them. The movement made Eponine glance at him sideways, and press her lips together as though she knew exactly why Grantaire had curled into a protective ball.

“Your turn,” Jehan said brightly, and gestured to the bottle.

“Do I have to?” Enjolras asked. It was the first thing he'd said since the shot, and his voice was unchanged; still civilised, still low, still cool.

“ _Yes_ , loser,” Courfeyrac said, rolling his eyes to the heavens, and burst into cackling like an African parrot when Enjolras's lacklustre spin of the bottle landed back on Marius and they both stared at each other wide-eyed.

“Shot,” Marius squeaked (“It's not your turn to pick,” Musichetta reminded him). Enjolras nodded fervent agreement, and licked salt off the side of Marius's neck like it was strychnine.

His tongue was pink, and pointed, and watching it didn't do anything to help Grantaire's pants problem. He whimpered internally until the bottle and the spotlight landed back on him, several turns later. 

The sudden attention brought his chin up and his attention abruptly back onto the game, and he looked up into Musichetta's fine-boned face, mask-like under the pearly powder she favoured.

“Come here,” she said, imperious, and kissed him on the mouth. Sheer fear wilted his erection, and the firm impersonal press of her painted lips did nothing to rekindle it. When she leaned back, Joly was looking at him with a furrowed brow and Bossuet was very quietly miming throat-slitting. Bahorel, who Grantaire was going to punch later for dragging him to this party of torture, flashed him a thumbs-up.

Enjolras looked amused, and Grantaire wasn't sure whether or not to add that to the list of Enjolras's small sins he kept in his head when he spun the bottle again – 

And again, it landed on Enjolras.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Grantaire said blankly, still wiping red lipstick off his chin.

“Are you rigging it somehow?” Feuilly asked, interested as he always was in mechanical problems, and Grantaire shot him a panicked glance.

“ _Fuck_ no –”

“Let's get it over with,” Enjolras said, lifting first his chin, and then his eyebrows.

That was a challenge. Grantaire said, in mocking echo of his grammar, “Oh, _let's_ ,” and waved away the tequila bottle when Bossuet offered it.

The last shot was still sloshing around nauseatingly in his stomach on top of the bottle of wine he'd put away, and the beers, and if he threw up in Enjolras's lap, well, it didn't fucking matter, because it wasn't like he could disgust Enjolras any further.

Enjolras's eyebrows climbed another degree as Grantaire crawled across the circle to him, but he didn't move, didn't jerk back or call the game off. He stayed absolutely stiff and let Grantaire kiss him with his boozy breath and his three days of stubble. 

It was like kissing a statue, but Enjolras allowed him to brush his lips over his own, and parted them slightly in surprise when Grantaire let his tongue flicker out, testing their sealed line.

That was the point when Grantaire needed to let him go and sink back, point made and kiss delivered, butterfly-light and only the tiniest increment dirty. Instead he tilted his head and ran his tongue over that revealed sliver of tender skin, and felt Enjolras shudder, and his mouth open further, his head tilting in obedient echo to find a better angle. 

An inch was as good as a mile – Grantaire kissed him a second time, deeper, and Enjolras let him. Incredibly, he just kept _letting_ him. Remained passive, allowing rather than seeking, but tilted his head further and let Grantaire take what he wanted.

Then the pressure changed, something unfroze, and Enjolras started to kiss him back. His hands found Grantaire's forearms, fingers digging into the skin. At the first questioning slide of his tongue Grantaire groaned way too deeply and grabbed a fistful of that shining blond hair, which _was_ just as soft as it looked.

Enjolras made a sound of his own back, not so much a moan as an inquiry, and Grantaire pressed himself closer, ground their chests together, and tightened his hand in Enjolras's curls as he tongued him properly, which produced a real moan – 

“Um,” Marius said, and it wasn't as much an interjection as it was a squeak. Cosette put her hand over his mouth, but it was too late – Grantaire jerked and Enjolras tore his hands and mouth away from from him like he'd been burned. 

Combeferre cleared his throat.

“ _That's_ how it's done,” Jehan said very quietly.

Grantaire screwed his eyes shut in desperate embarrassment, but not before glancing at Enjolras, who had flushed the faint pink of rosé in the glass high on his cheeks, and was staring at him with his eyes rather blacker than they'd been before, his red mouth so beautiful in its parted confusion that it begged to be bitten.

“Are you going to do this every time we have a party?” Marius asked plaintively. “I mean, I don't mind, but if you could warn us? That would be nice? Last time was bad enough –”

“What last time?” Enjolras asked, and Grantaire cracked open one eye. 

“I think Marius means the time he walked in on you and found Grantaire with his penis out,” Cosette said helpfully, a secret snake who only looked like an innocent flower.

“That wasn't – that _wasn't,_ ” Enjolras said, and came to a stop, the patches on his cheekbones now the shade of Beaujolais with the sun shining through it. 

Grantaire could barely remember anything about that last disastrous party, except that he'd been sitting on the kitchen floor, ranting about something, and Enjolras had been looking at him with cool and distant detachment from the other side of the room, and at some point his dick had been out and he'd been stroking himself as he talked; and Marius had walked in on them, gone green, and retreated in haste. The memory was as blurred as a room seen through a curved fishbowl, but Grantaire couldn't remember Enjolras so much as touching him – and if that had happened, he'd remember. 

“It's possible that Marius means all the shitty godawful flirting you do,” Bossuet said, even less helpfully, except that he seemed to be including Enjolras in his indicative wave. 

Who said, through his teeth,“ _I do not flirt with Grantaire._ ”

The teeth Grantaire had been licking a moment ago. In front of the people he worked with and was beginning to call friends, because he couldn't control himself when he was drunk; couldn't control his tongue around Enjolras, couldn't walk a straight line when he was nearby, couldn't get two words out without insulting him or one of his sacred cows; couldn't play fucking spin the bottle without heading for his tonsils like a teenager. The blooming champagne bubbles of incredulous disbelief and buzzing arousal popped, punctured.

“Of _course_ not,” he said. “Not you; not Enjolras _sans tâche,_ Enjolras _sans peur et sans reproche_. I should probably apologise for slobbering all over you, or something, but I enjoyed it, so I won't. Joyeux Noël," he added, getting to his feet, and took a deep swig of tequila that left the back of his throat feeling raw. "And happy fucking New Year."

"Oh my god," Eponine said, tugging on his arm, "stop being so dramatic."

"We haven't even had the cake yet," Cosette said, more diplomatically, "you can't leave before that," and her big blue eyes went huge and round and kitten-like, pleading.

Between the two of them, it was difficult to maintain offended hauteur. Grantaire scowled, but allowed himself to be convinced, and Courfeyrac called an end to the game, and attempted to smooth the troubled waters in his own inimical way.

This involved hugging Grantaire from behind, limpet-like, removing the bottle from his hand and passing it off to Joly to hide somewhere it would take Grantaire some time to ferret out, and dropping a rain of indiscriminate kisses on the back of Grantaire's neck like that would make him feel all better. Admittedly, it helped.

Grantaire still wanted to disappear and lick his wounds somewhere dark and private, to assimilate the see-saw of rapid emotion that had left him dizzy; to masturbate to the memory of the roof of Enjolras's mouth until he _chafed_. But everyone was making an effort at merriment. If he left, it might remove the spectre at the feast, but it would spoil it in another way. 

So he summoned up another fake slipping smile, turned his head to kiss Courfeyrac's cheek, and pretended to brighten up when the plates of food were brought out.

“Low blood sugar often leads to patches of moodiness and irritation,” Joly said to him in a half-aside, like he needed to make Grantaire's excuses for him.

Grantaire selected an oyster and chewed it lasciviously for a moment before he swallowed. It was dressed with lime and chilli, not lemon and garlic, but the texture and taste of it reminded him for a moment of other Christmas when his grandmother had still been alive, and his problem wasn't booze but trying not to eat himself sick when faced with the thirteen desserts for the twelve Apostles and Christ the saviour. Gluttony; that had always been his besetting sin. 

“What about high blood alcohol?” he asked, and Joly grinned around his slice of bread and pâté. 

“It depends on the quantity consumed, and the person consuming. It can encourage mirth and laughter, or increase black moods – sanguine or melancholic, if we're being medieval.”

“What's your diagnosis?”

“You need to get laid,” Joly said. 

Grantaire laughed, somewhere between blood and bile. Said with real feeling, “Holy _fuck_ , do I.”

-

After the bûche de Noël was cut, Grantaire took advantage of the heady distraction of vanilla sponge and chocolate ganache to disappear into the empty kitchen and liberate another bottle of shitty muscat. 

“What are you doing?” Enjolras asked, and it was the third fucking time today that he'd come up silently behind him when Grantaire really didn't need his censorious presence and caught him by surprise, red-faced or red-handed. 

This time, both.

“What does it look like?” He found another knife in the drawer and used it to remove the cork. The muscat fizzed in its bottle with a seductive susurration. Put to his ear, it was like the hissing of a thousand sea snakes. “What are _you_ doing, fleur de la chevalerie?"

“Never mind,” Enjolras said. The expression on his face was that of a judge who had found the prisoner in the dock guilty. “Is it even possible to talk to you when you're not drunk or obnoxious?”

“If I'm not one or the other, I'm both,” Grantaire said. Enjolras had no right to sound disappointed or to sit in judgment on him. He couldn't hold lesser mortals to his inhuman standards. Grantaire knew how achingly immense the chasm between them was; he didn't need his face rubbed in it. “Since you won't find me sober until after New Year, spit it out, or fuck off, and stop looking at me like I'm committing grand theft vino.”

“Give me the bottle.”

Grantaire handed it over like the whipped puppy he was, and watched Enjolras weigh it thoughtfully in his hand, like he was trying to estimate how much of it Grantaire had managed to put away in one pull. 

Then he took a long swallow himself. 

It wasn't just the sight of his throat working in the way that made Grantaire think about blowjobs that stopped him dead, or even the fact that a moment ago he'd had his mouth on it, and now Enjolras did, like a kiss at one remove; it was Enjolras, drinking like he needed it, release or dutch courage or simple thirst, whatever his reason was. That wasn't on Grantaire's carefully tended list of Enjolras's venial sins. It wasn't in his imagined hemisphere.

When Enjolras finally stopped drinking, he said, “I really don't like this wine.”

“Do you like any wine?” Grantaire asked, fascinated.

“White. Dry. A little, sometimes. This is too sweet.” He ran his tongue over his lips, like the sweetness lingered.

If it was anyone else, Grantaire would suspect them of flirting, but it was Enjolras, and he didn't flirt, and he especially didn't flirt with Grantaire. It was Enjolras slumming in his company in the kitchen the way he slummed it at the Musain, like he needed a dark background to shine all the brighter against.

“What the fuck are you even doing in here? It wasn't to steal my wine, and it can't have been for the pleasure of my company. The last time it was you and me and a bottle of wine in this kitchen –”

“Courfeyrac's wine. And I did want your company.”

“Bullshit. ”

“You said that you enjoyed it,” Enjolras said, sounded puzzled. He moistened his mouth again, still chasing lingering sweetness; or perhaps just in sense-memory. "Kissing me.”

“Kissing is fun,” Grantaire said, with a roll of one shoulder. “That's why people _do_ it, peerless Enjolras.”

"Yes," Enjolras said, and stepped slightly closer.

Grantaire stared at him. One boot in his mouth already; all he needed to do now was insult Enjolras badly enough to send him spinning around and out of the room again, eternally out of reach when he was suddenly so close. He took a juddering breath. “I see. Is _that_ what you came in here to say?”

Enjolras's eyelids dipped. Grantaire was almost as close to him now as he'd been when he'd leaned in to suck on the lime held between his teeth, and Enjolras was undeniably looking at his mouth. “I thought we might have unfinished business.”

“I've been hard since I took that shot off your arm,” Grantaire said, and there he was, fucking up right on cue, “but I really doubt that's what you mean.”

Enjolras frowned, but his eyes dropped briefly to his crotch before fixing on Grantaire's mouth again, and that was intent in the clear lines of his face. “It's close enough.”

“What, do you want me to flash you again?”

“I might help you, this time.”

“If you're fucking with me,” Grantaire said unevenly, and drew in his breath sharply when Enjolras hooked his thumb in the vee of his t-shirt and tugged it down, baring the top of his chestpiece, the black and red lines weaving together and apart. He traced them with his finger for a moment, and then he leaned in and licked his collarbone like he was checking for stray grains of salt, a body shot gone astray. 

Then his head dipped lower, mouth hot and wet against the tattoo itself. It'd been healed and finished for years, the ink invisible under the fingertips, but where the point of Enjolras's tongue traced the pattern the skin felt newly strange and oversensitive.

Grantaire groaned like an idiot and ground against him in a helpless full-body shudder. “Fucking - do you have a tattoo thing? Is that what this is?”

“You have tattoos,” Enjolras said, running his tongue along one line again, “so I suppose, yes.”

“What does that even – _ugh_.” Grantaire shuddered when Enjolras pricked his neck with his teeth. “Oh fuck, there's no way you're a virgin.” He'd had several hot wanking sessions structured around feverishly imagining that Enjolras was as untouched as he looked, but he knew what to do with his mouth, that was for sure.

“No; is that relevant?”

Grantaire put both hands in his ridiculous hair and pulled his head up. “ _So irrevelant_ ,” he breathed, and kissed him hard to show him just how irrelevant it was. 

It was better than irrelevant, knowing that Enjolras wasn't absolutely and hopelessly pure, without spot or stain. Not the distant and perfect stranger he was from afar, but up close, someone who picked up guys in his friend's kitchen because he liked the way they kissed and offered them handjobs. Someone who could be touched. This kiss was better, too, because this Enjolras wasn't a still statue who needed to be coaxed into yielding just a fraction now. He was fluid and hot and his mouth was already open, already known, and Grantaire's throat and collarbone were tingling with feeling; and when Grantaire took his lip between his teeth – 

“Bedroom,” Enjolras said, voice was still composed, even as he ground his erection into Grantaire's hip. “Courfeyrac's spare room is down the hall.”

“I know where he keeps the condoms,” Grantaire blurted, and there was no way that sounded seductive, sounded anything but sleazy – but, amazingly, Enjolras kissed him again, like sleazy was fine with him. 

Sleazy was the least of all the things Grantaire wanted from him, but if it was what he could get, he'd take it with both hands and call it a Christmas miracle.

-

Courfeyrac's spare room and the way there was a blur; all Grantaire cared about was Enjolras, all he could see was Enjolras, Enjolras taking off his shirt to reveal more soft touchable skin, shockingly pale against his own tanned hands, the tattoos twisting around his forearms. His hands didn't belong on Enjolras's body. They looked alien, like the ink and smut might rub off and mar him.

“Oh,” Enjolras said, when Grantaire pulled his own t-shirt over his head, and touched his hip. “I haven't seen half of these – turn around.”

“No time,” Grantaire said, which was easier than saying _don't look at me_. He kissed his way down Enjolras's chest, a trail of hard sucking little kisses, and watched the fair skin bloom with red marks in his wake. Nosed at the scattered trail of golden-brown hair leading down from his navel, _thought_ about trying to pull down Enjolras's zipper with his teeth, and then thought better of it.

“I'm not in a hur – _oh,_ ” Enjolras said, as Grantaire tugged his jeans and briefs down his hips together in one rough jerk, desperate to get his mouth on his cock.

Of course Enjolras had a pretty cock. It wouldn't be fair to make him perfect in every limb and lineament, and then give him some ugly purple monster, some sad little brown thumb. No, he was pink and scarlet and shining, and bucked against the back of Grantaire's throat hard enough to choke him when he attempted too much, too soon. “Are you –”

“ _Fine_ ,” Grantaire managed, because this was going to be good, if it _killed_ him, it was going to be whatever Saint Enjolras wanted from him. It was going to blow his mind and rock his world.

Enjolras tasted mortal, like any other guy at the end of a long day – slightly cleaner, maybe, but sweat and salt and skin. He was unusual only in how still he held himself, how undemanding his hands were on Grantaire's head.

After that first time, his hips only bucked once or twice, then stayed steady like he was willing them quiet. Maybe that was how Enjolras liked to be blown, long leisurely sucking sessions that made the sucker's jaw ache and crack, luxuriating in drawing out the sensation forever and never quite coming, but Grantaire wasn't patient enough for that. He wanted Enjolras hot and desperate and begging. 

Anyone else, and Grantaire would pull off, wipe his mouth and say sarcastically, “Am I _boring_ you?”, but Enjolras's stomach was hard and drawn tight with tension, the tendons inside his thighs trembling whipcord. His eyes were shut, and there was a delicious golden gleam of sweat shining on his upper lip. 

He wasn't bored. Maybe he didn't want to give Grantaire the sastisfaction of knowing what he was doing to him, but that was too bad; Grantaire knew what he was doing.

He slid his tongue against the underside of his cock, relaxed his throat, and went down. All the way down, sinking his fingers into the firm muscle of Enjolras's college-boy thighs like hooks at the same time.

Enjolras writhed under him, and only Grantaire's hands on him stopped him choking again. “Mm,” he said encouragingly, and at the hum vibrating up from his breastbone, Enjolras shuddered again.

“What are you – _God_ ,” he said, the word strange in his blaspheming angel's mouth.

Had no one ever deep-throated him before? That was a crime, Grantaire decided, and he was going to exploit it. Take Enjolras apart and break him down into quivering needy noise and flesh.

“Mm,” he agreed, drawing the sound out this time, and Enjolras twitched.

It was easy after that; the way Grantaire wanted it, with Enjolras's hands painful in his hair and broken strings of blasphemy spooling from his mouth.

When he came, it was with a curse, and then he went still and heavy under him, like all his energy had left him with his orgasm. 

Grantaire leaned his head against his thigh and shut his eyes, trying to catch his breath.

They lay like that for a few moments – minutes – before Enjolras's hand tightened in his hair again, tugging against the sore places on his skull. 

Grantaire made a protesting noise.

“Come _up_ here,” Enjolras said, and tugged again. 

Reluctantly, Grantaire crawled up the bed, along his body, and hovered over him.

The blue eyes were still cool, but the eyelids were heavy, the full mouth a little open, the bottom lip swollen and bitten. Enjolras was a study in mixed signals, someone who always refused to back down from a challenge, met you head-on, head-to-head, unwavering and unyielding – Grantaire couldn't hide from him even if he closed his eyes, so he stared back, meeting him look for look.

“Didn't you say something about helping me out?”

“Mm,” Enjolras said, and kissed him, straining up on his elbows to reach. He didn't seem to mind the fact that Grantaire had just been sucking his cock, that he'd swallowed; instead he tilted his head and rubbed Grantaire's tongue with his own with a slow sensual sort of gratitude that did the most helpless fluttering things to Grantaire's stomach and in no way helped the perilous situation in his pants.

“Fucking jerk me off already,” he muttered, and Enjolras pulled back to study him again.

“You're very blunt, aren't you?”

“That's how I roll, yeah.” 

“Do you particularly dislike me, or is that just how you talk to everyone?”

“Oh, I suck the dicks of people I hate all the time,” Grantaire said, and laughed wildly. He buried his face in Enjolras's shoulder when he couldn't bear his penetrating stare any longer. “Look, you might like to talk in the afterglow, but I haven't had any _glow_ yet.”

“True,” Enjolras said, and reached down between them. He tugged at the waist of Grantaire's jeans, and Grantaire rolled obediently onto his side and worked them down. Enjolras rolled after him, and that wasn't actually much better, because now he could prop his face on his hand and stare at Grantaire as he jerked him off with the other hand at his leisure, and Grantaire had his mouth open to complain when Enjolras spat matter-of-factly into his palm and reached down to take him in hand.

It wasn't just that incredulous moment of first contact that made Grantaire shut up and moan stupidly; it was the simple filthiness of the gesture and the ease with which Enjolras made it.

Enjolras said, “You've got a very expressive face.”

“ _Unghh_ ,” Grantaire managed weakly as Enjolras worked him up and down, and privately thanked Benedict God the Father that he hadn't come in one hot spurt the moment Enjolras touched him.

“I was watching you,” Enjolras said, and kissed the hollow of his throat, distractedly running the tip of his tongue down to his chest. He seemed to be particularly fascinated by Grantaire's chest piece, which peeked out of most of his shirts so often that management had stopped asking to cover it up, interested in the contrast of the tattooed arm stroking his own smooth side, the way Grantaire's hairy legs tangled with his. Enjolras himself was a thousand soft shades of milk and honey from head to heels, his blue eyes inset among all the gold like unpolished lapis lazuli, and – 

“What?”

“I said, I was watching you,” Enjolras said, and slowed down, stroking him slower like he wanted Grantaire to listen to what he was saying. “In the kitchen. When you took your dick out.”

“ _Why would you mention that_ ,” Grantaire moaned piteously. “I'm going to lose my boner.”

“Do you even remember? We were arguing, and you made a comparison between the quality of the disagreement we were having and jerking off – about the quality of _my_ arguments,” Enjolras amended, and Grantaire moaned again and tried to hide his face in his shoulder. “The demonstration wasn't necessary, but I goaded you. I didn't think you'd actually – You did,” he said, and if he thought that this clinical recounting was dirty talk, Grantaire was going to have to educate him – “and I watched.”

Grantaire lifted his head and blinked three incredulous times. “You watc– Did you _like_ it?”

“Yes,” Enjolras said, because he was nothing if not ruthlessly honest. “So it wasn't entirely your fault.”

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Grantaire said, and rutted ruthlessly up into his fist at the thought of Enjolras watching him jerk off the way he was watching him now, with every iota of his attention fixed on Grantaire's apparently expressive face. “That's not – pretty sure I don't need help being stupid. Just being around you makes me stupid.”

“You make yourself stupid.” That wasn't exactly boner-fuel, but Grantaire's dick didn't seem to realise it. It would probably tingle to Enjolras reciting the Communist Manifesto. Then Enjolras frowned. “Being around me makes you stupid?”

“You fucking _know_ it does,” Grantaire said, and shook weakly in his tightened grasp.

“How should I know? I only see you when you're around me. ”

“Point,” Grantaire agreed mindlessly, “but it does, _everyone_ knows it does,” because there was nothing he wouldn't admit or agree to right now, didn't care what secrets he was spilling. He was losing track of the conversation in favour of closing in on his own orgasm.

Enjolras finally, thankfully stopped talking, and pressed his long sleek body to his; and it was against his stomach that Grantaire finally came.

“Oh, Jesus, thank you, fuck,” he said, sex-stupid, and panted against Enjolras's shoulder for long moments as Enjolras's long fingers worked thoughtfully through the damp dark curls at the base of his neck.

-

“Oh my god! On my bed?!"

Enjolras went completely still, and Grantaire closed his eyes. “Please tell me that's not –”

“Just turn around, darling,” someone else said kindly, and that was Cosette, so Grantaire peeked up past Enjolras's shoulder in time to watch Marius making a horrified exit. 

“ _Oops_ ,” she said, her hand over her mouth and her eyes huge and delighted above it. “He's just recovered from last time, R – well, never mind. We're off to midnight mass with Papa, so you should have some time to, um – Joyeux Noël!” 

She gave them a thumbs-up, and closed the door firmly behind her.

“Bahorel's been a very bad influence on that girl,” Grantaire said thoughtfully. “Hey,” he added, when Enjolras didn't move. “They're gone. Cosette won't let anyone else come in. Okay, it royally sucks that the others are going to hear about this, but I can stand a little teasing, if you can bear it –”

Enjolras stirred into life. “Were you planning on not mentioning it?”

“I – um.” Grantaire scratched at one of the tacky spots on his stomach. He'd come all over both himself and Enjolras, and that was fantasy jerk-off material for the next forever. “Weren't you?”

“I was planning on asking you if you wanted to do it again.” Enjolras's eyebrows rose in that supercilious way that usually filled Grantaire with the blind desire to pull his hair. “Since I apparently make you stupid, and you don't hate me enough not to suck my dick, which have to be the nicest things you've ever said in my presence.”

“You're welcome,” Grantaire said, because he was a fucking idiot, and promptly closed his eyes and groaned feelingly at his own idiocy. When he opened them, Enjolras was still looking at him, with a strange mixture of fondness and irritation on his face, like he was beginning to work out what Grantaire really meant when he said stupid shit. “I mean. Please. _Yes_. See, fuck, I can't even talk around you, with how much I constantly want to suck your dick.”

Enjolras smiled just a little, and Grantaire smiled helplessly back. A smile that faltered when Enjolras touched the drying spatter on his own belly, and murmured with satisfaction " _Je suis la vache avec un tâche... Deux tâches, trois tâches_..." and he had to close his eyes again, because that was both too delightful and too terrible to be borne.

"You _loser_ ," he said. And then, "Je vous enjôler, Enjolras, kiss me again so I can forget you just did that."

" _That's_ terrible," Enjolras said, but his smile deepened, and he leaned across. 

-

The bells rung for midnight mass a little while later, sounding the réveillon peal. Grantaire had confidently expected to be halfway to passed out by the time Paris began to fill with music, cushioned from melancholy with enough alcohol to fell an ox. It found him instead tangled together with Enjolras in Pontmercy's bed, sharing a cigarette back and forth and trading kisses with it, the cherry burning lower forgotten in his hand as he wrapped the other in Enjolras's masses of hair and kissed him _Joyeux Noël_ , as sweetly as he could manage with Enjolras's foot stroking his calf, encouraging him to greater filthiness.

When his fingers started to tingle painfully, Grantaire yelped, pulling away, and hurriedly extinguished the cigarette stub in the glass of water Marius had left out on the bedside table. "We should probably get dressed and head back to the party for our ritual shaming," he said regretfully.

"Probably," Enjolras agreed, but neither of them moved.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you like this, skeletonsmama! I thought, 'okay, I'll go with the bodyshots and tattoos suggestion in the prompt, that shouldn't be too long...' (Famous last words). Joyeux Noël! <3


End file.
